Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Willravel · 06-24-2009, 10:21 AM

This review is long, but I think everyone should read it before deciding whether or not to see Michael Bay's new Transformers movie.

Quote:

Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.

Oh, and I would warn you that there'll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I'm not sure how much I can spoil it.

Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.

Michael Bay understands that summer movies are about two things: male anxiety, and pure id. That's why he casts Shia LaBoeuf, that supreme avatar of pure male inadequacy, in the lead role. LaBoeuf projects a pathetic, wall-eyed dorkhood, when he's not babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen's prostate that somehow achieved sentience. I imagine the DVD of ROTF will include a whole disk of outtakes where they had to stop filming because LaBoeuf was drooling on camera. As it is, the film includes several extreme closeups of LaBoeuf's dazed stare.

Where was I? Oh yes. So LaBoeuf, who's actually a fine actor, is the stand-in for the male viewers' greatest fears about themselves. No matter how great a loser they might be, they can't be as losery a loser as Sam Witwicky. And yet, Sam has awesome giant robots stomping around telling him he's the most important awesome person ever. And he has the hottest girlfriend in the universe, Megan Fox, for whom banality is a huge aphrodisiac. The more pathetic Sam gets, the more Fox's lips pout and her nipples point, like little Irish setters.

To make matters more awesome for the insecure males in the audience, Sam actually tosses aside his giant robot fanclub and his walking-pinup girlfriend, so he can have a normal life. Of course, this only leads to other robots and hawt chicks (who turn out to be robots too) throwing themselves at him and telling him how important he is. In the end, everybody learns to appreciate Sam just a bit more than they already did, and a booming voice tells him he's earned the "matrix of leadership" through his courage and stuff.

And then there's the "id" part, which is the part where stuff blows up real good, and huge machines smash each other up. And every single performance is so ridiculous that it looks down on "over the top" as if from a great height. It's the part of your brain that thinks it would be awesome to see robots with giant dangling testicles, or hot chicks turning into robot tentacle monsters, or "ghetto" robots that talk in inept hip-hop slang and smash each other playfully, or funny Jewish men who talk about their "schmear" and randomly strip to their G-strings. Is that going too far? Then let's go 100 times farther than that and see what happens!

Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement.

And yet — and here's the part where I really think ROTF approaches "art movie" status — the movie's id overload reaches such crazy levels that the fabric of reality itself starts to break down. Michael Bay has boasted about how every single shot in the movie has so much stuff going on in it, it would take your PC since the dawn of time to render one frame. After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul. Nothing is solid, nothing is real, everything Transforms.

The closest thing I can think of to this movie is the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, which had a similar kind of CG image overload, although it was only five hours long as opposed to ROTF's nine.

And around hour six of ROTF, something curious happens: the two components — male enhancement and pure id — start to clash, badly. Usually, in a summer movie, the two aspects go together like tits and ass: Jason Statham plays someone who faces the same insecurities as regular dudes, but he overcomes them, and in the process he blows up everything in the world. But creating that kind of fusion requires enslaving the id to the male enhancement, and that in turn means only going way over the top instead of crazy, stratospheric over the top. Michael Bay is not willing to settle for going way over the top, like other directors.

So you have a movie that tries to reassure men that they can actually be masters of their reality — but then turns around and says that actually, reality is not real. There's no such thing as the "real world," and the only thing that's left for men to dominate is a nebulous domain of blurred shapes, which occasionally blurt nonsensical swear-words and slang from ethnic groups that have never existed. If you're drowning in an Olympic swimming pool full of hot chewing gum fondue, do you still care if Megan Fox likes you?

So yes, ROTF approaches the sublime, and then just keeps rocketing. Next stop: total anarchy. In a sense, it's the first war movie ever to convey a real sense of the fog of war, the confusion that comes with battle. Somewhere around hour nine, you will understand why friendly fire happens in wartime.

So I've gotten almost all the way through this review, and I still haven't summarized the movie's plot. Here goes. It's a couple years after the first movie, and Sam is going off to college, leaving his transforming car and his hot girlfriend, whom he still hasn't told he loves her. And meanwhile, the soldiers from the first movie are running around with a bunch of late-model GM cars and trucks, which turn into robots and fight other robots sometimes. Sam sees weird symbols which make no sense (and they still make no sense at the end of the movie) and they turn out to be the key to the location of a thing that can control another thing, that will enable the bad guys to destroy the sun. Sam has to embrace the heroic destiny he's rejected, so he can save us all from solarcide.

But that bare plot summary doesn't include the twenty or thirty other storylines that could also claim to be the movie's plot. There's the whole thing where someone from Washington D.C. wonders why the U.S. military is running around the globe with a bunch of late-model GM cars from outer space, and tries to put the kibosh on the military-Autobot complex. There's the teenager who's got a conspiracy website, that competes with another conpsiracy website which turns out to be the work of a secret agent who's decided that the best way to keep things secret is to put them on a website. (It works. I post secret stuff on io9 all the time.) Various robots die and then come back to life, and there's a whole strand about whether Decepticons (the bad ones) can become Autobots (the good ones). And there's the Fallen, who's sort of the movie's villain even though he barely shows up. And people from 17,000 BC who had weird teeth and fought robots. And the ancient Egyptians did stuff. And Sam's parents go to France except that they meet a robot and then they're in Egypt.

Really, I could go on and on. This movie starts out with a coherent storyline, for the first half hour or so, and then it just starts to spin faster and faster until the centrifuge of random events slams you into the walls. It doesn't help that there are 500 robots in the movie and they all look kind of the same.

Oh, but that's the other thing about ROTF. It's actually quite funny, a lot of the time. Some of the jokes fall flat, like the "twin" robots with the ghetto speak, and a lot of the stuff with John Turturro. But the movie's relentless silliness is mostly pretty hilarious, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, and almost nothing in the movie seems intended to be taken seriously.

So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF.

Women as well as men, everyone watching this film will feel the dissolution of all their certainties, all their illusory grasp on the world... but after you fall into a brazen despair that the walls of reality have become toxic ice cream of a million flavors, you will gasp with a greater realization: that once the world is reduced, forever, to a kaleidoscope of whirling shapes, you are totally free. Nothing matters, effect precedes cause, fish spawn in mid-air, and you can do whatever you want. Let yourself go in your adult diaper, Michael Bay invites you. Feel the music of total excess stir inside your deepest core. It is your Allspark, your cube. And you are a Transformer.

io9 - Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Baraka_Guru · 06-24-2009, 10:25 AM

Ouch.

Very ouch.

Lasereth · 06-24-2009, 10:27 AM

There is no way in hell I'll be seeing it because Ebert gave it 1 star. He liked the first one (as did I, and for the same reasons) so I know the 2nd one sucks if he says it does. Plus the 20% on RT doesn't help either.

Plan9 · 06-24-2009, 11:28 AM

What does a turd transform into, anyway?

mrklixx · 06-24-2009, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crompsin

What does a turd transform into, anyway?

Michael Bay

Willravel · 06-24-2009, 12:10 PM

Quote:

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.
...
After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul. Nothing is solid, nothing is real, everything Transforms.

I like the blog post more than I could possibly like the movie.

fresnelly · 06-24-2009, 12:36 PM

Intersesting. Liam Lacey's review in the Globe And Mail picked up on the exact same vibe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liam Lacey

Bay fills the screen with a hurricane of scrap metal and military hardware, in sequences that are almost avant-garde in their repetitive incoherence.

This touches on the my biggest complaint about the first one: Instead of pulling back and showing us the glory of Tranformers in the real world (Mecha-Godzilla style), Bay chose to close in entirely on their whirling gears, hydrolics and mechanics.

I'll be passing on the second thanks.

Baraka_Guru · 06-24-2009, 12:39 PM

Has anyone mentioned Megan Fox's screentime yet?

Frosstbyte · 06-24-2009, 12:39 PM

I cannot wait to see this movie. This review made me so excited. I'll let all you surreality haters know how it was once I stop seeing melting clocks and shit.

pta200 · 06-24-2009, 01:43 PM

"Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement."

I'm still can't stop laughing over that one!!!! One of the best lines I've read in a while.

Moyaboy · 06-25-2009, 01:03 AM

I thought it was a decent movie. Long but decent.

Lasereth · 06-25-2009, 04:23 AM

In before the flood of people reply with stuff like "If you go into the movie with your expectations low, you don't be disappointed" and "it's not bad for an action movie" or "it's pretty good if you want to see transformers fighting."

Willravel · 06-25-2009, 09:29 PM

Willravel's official review:

I don't want to see anything transform into anything ever again.

1/10

Punk.of.Ages · 06-25-2009, 09:30 PM

Fuck, I'm glad somebody agrees this movie is garbage...

Zeraph · 06-26-2009, 10:04 AM

The first was so cheesy I doubt I'll ever see this one. And this is coming from a guy who likes cartoons and anime.

DaniGirl · 06-26-2009, 10:19 AM

Well I have seen the movie and I didn't think it was that bad. But I have to say it had too much adult content then the first. More inappropriate jokes then it should. Transformers is for all ages and I would not let my 4 year old see a movie that has "balls" jokes. And by the way I went to the movie with Punk.or.Ages and he loved the movie. He said it was his favorite movie ever!!! LOL

Willravel · 06-26-2009, 11:05 AM

I'm thinking about throwing away by double-sided bed covers this movie was so bad.

kutulu · 07-13-2009, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaniGirl

Well I have seen the movie and I didn't think it was that bad. But I have to say it had too much adult content then the first. More inappropriate jokes then it should. Transformers is for all ages and I would not let my 4 year old see a movie that has "balls" jokes. And by the way I went to the movie with Punk.or.Ages and he loved the movie. He said it was his favorite movie ever!!! LOL

So adult humor = bad but wall to wall violence = good?

Plan9 · 07-13-2009, 03:39 PM

That movie was a two-flush corn log.

dlish · 07-13-2009, 08:38 PM

i saw it the other day...meh.

good graphics and animation.

storyline predictable.

geographical sense 0/10 - from petra to egypt in a flash? pfft

Vaultboy · 07-13-2009, 08:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaniGirl

Transformers is for all ages and I would not let my 4 year old see a movie that has "balls" jokes.

THe age restriction was 13 over here. Violence, even without blood, is not mean for "all ages". I also assume you're American? Its the only place where censoring nudity is more important than censoring violence.

Transformers 2 has hectic pacing. There's no time to think about what you see, and I realise that for some people the sensory overload is too much. You should do more LSD and expand your minds.

For all the haters, I predict that we'll have a Transformers-GI Joe megafest rolling around in 2012, as per the alternate universe comic.

Although the review in the first post drips with sarcasm, It should be recognised that Bay did not use the rapid pace to gloss over plot holes in his simple script. JJ Abrams' Star Trek, which also had a simple plot and a fast pace, was as holey as every Star trek before it.

The issues I had with Transformers 2:

- Still not enough meaningful screen time for Ratchet and Ironhide. At least this time round they made Optimus the badass he's supposed to be. And the change to Jetfire was poor.

- A Human Transformer. Really now. I already went to watch Terminator last month.

- Megan Fox. She irritated the hell out of me. I think Bay could direct a pretty good Soft Porn, with her in the lead. I expect the most common direction in her script was (Pouting, and Perking up your breasts) : ".....

- The bikes: Why was there a need for CGI extras? To fill up the already busy screen?

- The twins. I hope that Chevy has a master plan to make small cars "cool" in the US. Its too late to convert you, so they're starting with the next gen of car buyers. If this is the case, then I could live with it - otherwise they were a waste - could have beefed up Ironhide and Rachet's screen time.

m0rpheus · 07-14-2009, 03:43 AM

This is, at best, Go-bots: The Movie. I'm still waiting for a real Transformers movie.

Seer666 · 07-20-2009, 10:49 PM

I seem to be in the minority of people that enjoyed this movie. I mean, it's giant robots blowing shit up. I could have lived without the Twins, but the mother had my pissing myself every time she opened her mouth. And, it was giant robots blowing shit up. The plot was on par with the TV show, and IT WAS GIANT ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP. The fact that it was the first movie we got to go see on a whim sense the boys were born also helped the enjoyment factor. And, IT WAS GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP!

KellyC · 07-21-2009, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seer666

I seem to be in the minority of people that enjoyed this movie. I mean, it's giant robots blowing shit up. I could have lived without the Twins, but the mother had my pissing myself every time she opened her mouth. And, it was giant robots blowing shit up. The plot was on par with the TV show, and IT WAS GIANT ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP. The fact that it was the first movie we got to go see on a whim sense the boys were born also helped the enjoyment factor. And, IT WAS GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP!

I am in the same boat as you. That's all I really wanted to see after the first movie. Bonus points for adequately exploring the Transfomer universe but it's not something I count on being this a Michael Bay movie.

RonRyan85 · 07-24-2009, 06:21 PM

Thirteen Days: Made in 2000, Stars Kevin Cosner and Bruce Greenwood. This 2 hr.15 min
movie tells the story when in October 1962 President John F. Kennedy and the White House
personel keep WORLD WAR 3 from happening. After the CCCP installs nuclear tipped military
rockets in Cuba, the President must act to bomb Cuba or have the Navy quarantine the island
with their ships. A good movie ,even if you know what happened at the end and remember
wondering in 1962 if WW3 was going to happen.

06-24-2009, 10:25 AM	#2 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Ouch. Very ouch. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-24-2009, 10:27 AM	#3 (permalink)
Lasereth Knight of the Old Republic Location: Winston-Salem, NC	There is no way in hell I'll be seeing it because Ebert gave it 1 star. He liked the first one (as did I, and for the same reasons) so I know the 2nd one sucks if he says it does. Plus the 20% on RT doesn't help either. __________________ "A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

06-24-2009, 11:28 AM	#4 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	What does a turd transform into, anyway? __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake."

06-24-2009, 12:39 PM	#8 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Has anyone mentioned Megan Fox's screentime yet? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-25-2009, 01:03 AM	#11 (permalink)
Moyaboy Crazy Location: Charlotte, NC	I thought it was a decent movie. Long but decent. __________________ "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

06-24-2009, 12:39 PM	#9 (permalink)
Frosstbyte Winter is Coming Location: The North	I cannot wait to see this movie. This review made me so excited. I'll let all you surreality haters know how it was once I stop seeing melting clocks and shit.

06-24-2009, 01:43 PM	#10 (permalink)
pta200 Insane	"Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement." I'm still can't stop laughing over that one!!!! One of the best lines I've read in a while.

06-25-2009, 04:23 AM	#12 (permalink)
Lasereth Knight of the Old Republic Location: Winston-Salem, NC	In before the flood of people reply with stuff like "If you go into the movie with your expectations low, you don't be disappointed" and "it's not bad for an action movie" or "it's pretty good if you want to see transformers fighting." __________________ "A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

06-25-2009, 09:29 PM	#13 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Willravel's official review: I don't want to see anything transform into anything ever again. 1/10

06-25-2009, 09:30 PM	#14 (permalink)
Punk.of.Ages Forming Location: ....a state of pure inebriation.	Fuck, I'm glad somebody agrees this movie is garbage... __________________ "The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion..." - Henry Steel Commager "Punk rock music is great music played by really bad, drunk musicians." -Fat Mike

06-26-2009, 10:04 AM	#15 (permalink)
Zeraph Banned Location: The Cosmos	The first was so cheesy I doubt I'll ever see this one. And this is coming from a guy who likes cartoons and anime.

06-26-2009, 10:19 AM	#16 (permalink)
DaniGirl Addict Location: Fucking Utah...	Well I have seen the movie and I didn't think it was that bad. But I have to say it had too much adult content then the first. More inappropriate jokes then it should. Transformers is for all ages and I would not let my 4 year old see a movie that has "balls" jokes. And by the way I went to the movie with Punk.or.Ages and he loved the movie. He said it was his favorite movie ever!!! LOL

06-26-2009, 11:05 AM	#17 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	I'm thinking about throwing away by double-sided bed covers this movie was so bad.

07-13-2009, 03:39 PM	#19 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	That movie was a two-flush corn log. __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake."

07-13-2009, 08:38 PM	#20 (permalink)
dlish Currently sour but formerly Dlishs Super Moderator Location: Australia/UAE	i saw it the other day...meh. good graphics and animation. storyline predictable. geographical sense 0/10 - from petra to egypt in a flash? pfft __________________ An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay? - Filthy

07-14-2009, 03:43 AM	#22 (permalink)
m0rpheus bad craziness Location: Guelph, Ontario	This is, at best, Go-bots: The Movie. I'm still waiting for a real Transformers movie. __________________ "it never got weird enough for me." - Hunter S. Thompson

07-20-2009, 10:49 PM	#23 (permalink)
Seer666 Oh dear God he breeded Location: Arizona	I seem to be in the minority of people that enjoyed this movie. I mean, it's giant robots blowing shit up. I could have lived without the Twins, but the mother had my pissing myself every time she opened her mouth. And, it was giant robots blowing shit up. The plot was on par with the TV show, and IT WAS GIANT ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP. The fact that it was the first movie we got to go see on a whim sense the boys were born also helped the enjoyment factor. And, IT WAS GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS BLOWING SHIT UP! __________________ Bad spellers of the world untie!!! I am the one you warned me of I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

07-24-2009, 06:21 PM	#25 (permalink)
RonRyan85 Insane Location: Lone Star State,USA	Thirteen days Thirteen Days: Made in 2000, Stars Kevin Cosner and Bruce Greenwood. This 2 hr.15 min movie tells the story when in October 1962 President John F. Kennedy and the White House personel keep WORLD WAR 3 from happening. After the CCCP installs nuclear tipped military rockets in Cuba, the President must act to bomb Cuba or have the Navy quarantine the island with their ships. A good movie ,even if you know what happened at the end and remember wondering in 1962 if WW3 was going to happen.